The other day my oldest son asked me if there was a rule of thumb or a formula that could be used to determine if there was enough business in a community to support another Home Inspector. Any thoughts?
If I had to determine a need I guess I would start
- Average annual home sales X .40 = available inspections
- Number of inspectors X 300 = completed inspections
- Available inspections - completed inspections
Just my opinion
10000 home sales X .40 = 4000 available inspections
10 inspectors X 300 = 3000 completed inspections
4000 - 3000 = 1000 potential need for 3 more inspectors.
Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts.
There isn’t room for you. You don’t need room. You carve out your share from amongst the others and drive someone else’s share down. If you find that you are unable to do that, then there wasn’t room enough for another inspector of your caliber.
It may sound harsh, but that’s the way it actually works unless you find a market where there is a significant amount of unserviced demand. I haven’t heard of too many onboarding inspectors complaining of being overwhelmed by the pent-up, unserviced demand.
Make room for yourself by displacing one or more lesser inspectors. That’s one of the mechanisms that drives improvement in the industry.
If, after looking at the product of your competition, you honestly think you can provide a superior product at predominating local rates, are willing and able to continually challenge yourself to improve your product, are willing and able to take at least a year (likely more) to build your business base, and accept that people will not always agree with your value proposition, then, as Chuck says, you can make room for yourself.
That, and learn not to type in run-on sentences. Still working on that.
What Chuck said.
To say there are not enough inspectors would imply buyers are waiving their inspection contingencies because they couldn’t find an inspector. I’ve never heard of that.
The fallacy of this industry is so many educators sell it as a good/easy way to make money, but the fact is it is very tough to get any business up and running and successful.
Its like any business. If you want it bad enough you make it happen.
In a free market, supply = demand. If you are waiting for some freak time in history where the demand for inspectors is greater than the number of inspectors in your market… you will never make it in business. Furthermore, those times are short lived. Instead, aim to be in the top 20% of whatever business you are in, be that home inspections, a pizza shop, a real estate agent, a septic system installer, or whatever.
I actually aim for the top 1% (and normally fall a few percentage points short of that). The water is warm up here.
I’ll give you a real-life example of what I mean: If 100 national home inspection associations opened up tomorrow, they may all kill each other, but would have zero effect on InterNACHI.
Go get a piece of paper right now and write “I will be the best inspector in my town by next year.” Then tape it to your bathroom mirror. To hell with everyone else. Focus on your goal and your execution of the steps required to attain that goal.
Is there enough room for another.
There was a time that we did 750 inspections a year.
Today we do 3-4 a week. BUT because of the type inspection we do we make more than the 350-400 a year guys with way less work and more $$$$$
Find a niche and work it.